


Collar

by Little Spoon (AlwaysTheLittleSpoon)



Series: Occasionally Domestic [3]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Awkward Discoveries, Collars, Established Relationship, Family Fluff, Humor, M/M, Moving, Sheriff Stilinski Doesn't Want to Know, Snapchat, Stiles Stilinski is a Little Shit, Sub Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-04
Updated: 2017-02-04
Packaged: 2018-09-21 21:55:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9568526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysTheLittleSpoon/pseuds/Little%20Spoon
Summary: Packing up a teenager's bedroom can yield strange results and even stranger discoveries. Most would suspect a stash of porn, and knowing his son, that's exactly what Noah Stilinski expected when he had to pack up Stiles' bedroom for the move, but that's definitely not what he found.Sometimes, he really just doesn't want to know....





	

Noah Stilinski set an empty cardboard box down on Stiles' bed and glanced around his son's chaotic childhood bedroom. It hadn’t changed much over the years, even after Stiles had left. The bed was unmade, and what Noah suspected was one of Derek’s leather jackets was slung over the back of the desk chair from when Stiles’ had visited over the winter holiday two months ago.

Somehow, they thought he hadn't known Derek was sneaking in through the window like he had all throughout Stiles time in high school, or how Stiles mysteriously disappeared in the middle of the night. The Jeep wasn't exactly quiet. He hadn't minded, just as long as Stiles was sleeping. Lord knows he didn't get enough when he had been living there.

The walls still boasted evidence of his son’s high school, supernatural investigatory activities with bits of ripped paper, push pins, and pieces of frayed string. Noah could still remember with absolute clarity the night Stiles ripped the web of unanswered questions down and carried that part of his life to the curb in two large black garbage bags. It had been both a relief and heartbreaking.

Stiles’ choice to leave Beacon Hills shouldn’t have come as much of a shock as it had. It was for the best. Noah knew that with absolute certainty. His son had gotten out, and he was alive, but when he had left almost two years ago, Stiles hadn’t taken anything beyond a dusty old duffel bag stuffed with clothes and his laptop.

Starting with the closet, Noah began the arduous process of packing his adult son’s bedroom. Somethings would be shipped out east at Stiles’ request. Most were going into storage, sold, or donated to charity. Derek would probably want his jacket back too.

The announcement that Stiles had settled on Columbia had been a shock to be sure. He knew Stiles had applied, but he hadn't realized it was really in the running until Stiles sat him down to talk.

Stiles had never been one to run, but that’s exactly what he had done. Not that Noah blamed him. At first, he had expected his son to visit. Maybe to come home for vacations and holidays, or even transfer to a closer school once the loneliness set in, but he hadn’t. Almost two years later, and Stiles had visited a grand total of once.

By eighteen, Stiles had lived through the equivalent of several wars and suffered from PTSD. The memory of hearing Stiles’ primal screams of terror still haunted him. It had been devastating to listen to his son suffer while simultaneously knowing that he could do nothing to ease the pain or lessen the guilt.

Stripping the room and packing away Stiles’ childhood was slow work. Occasionally, he came across something from Stiles’ childhood that sparked a moment of warm nostalgia, like the little blue teddy bear that his wife had given Stiles shortly after he had been born. She’d made it herself. Or attempted to. The stitching was uneven, and the stuffing was coming out at the seams. One of the eyes was larger than the other, and the nose had fallen off.

Snapping a picture with some odd exploding picture app called Snapchat that Stiles’ had downloaded onto his phone for him, Noah sent Stiles a picture of Blinky Bear. 

“ _Do you want him?_ ”

Apparently, the app would help them stay connected, or at least, that’s how Stiles’ had sold him on it, and to be fair, it was nice to see Stiles’ life in New York, even if it was through grumpy pictures of Derek, and Stiles’ being an idiot. A certain exploding omelette video came to mind.

Noah was in the middle of sorting through the clothes Stiles left behind when his phone chimed with an alert. 

“ _OMG! YES!!_ ” 

The words were set over a picture of Stiles with a pen hanging from his mouth and a marker behind his ear. Noah snorted. In the background, he could see Derek engrossed in a book on the couch.

New York hadn’t been good for just Stiles. Noah had seen a marked improvement in Derek too. The werewolf seemed... softer. That was probably the best way to put it. Sometimes, he even smiled. If Noah couldn’t be there for his son, he was glad that Stiles had found a good friend in Derek. The poor werewolf no doubt had his hands full keeping Stiles out of trouble, but Noah would trust no one else.

By the late afternoon, most of the room had been packed into boxes and garbage bags. The sun was beginning to dip low on the horizon.

There had been a few things Noah had found that he didn’t really want to know where they came from, or how Stiles had even gotten his hands on them, especially while still underage, like the stash of whisky under the bed, a half empty box of condoms in an old sock, a box of chains with leather cuffs on the upper shelf in the closet, a metal baseball bat in the corner, and a machete strapped under the desk.

Praise the gods, Noah hadn’t found any porn amongst Stiles’ assorted belongings. He'd expected to, but not finding any had been a pleasant surprise. The machete had been alarming enough. Warranted based on his knowledge of Stiles’ high school years, but still a shock to the system.

Noah hauled the bare mattress off the bed frame and leaned it against an empty wall so he could disassemble the squeaky wooden piece of furniture. Scott had promised to drop by with Liam tomorrow and help him move the heavier furniture and boxes into the moving van parked outside. Melissa had already been a huge help packing the kitchen and sorting through his wife’s belongings. A decade had passed, but it never lessened the sting of loss.

Pulling the frame away from the wall, Noah heard a soft clunk against the floor as something fell. It took a few seconds of fishing, but he eventually managed to pull a red leather collar out from where it had been wedged between the headboard and the wall. It was high-quality leather and lined with soft fur, which was puzzling, but he shrugged.

“He did always want a dog,” Noah muttered and ran a hand through his hair.

Shaking his head, Noah went to toss the collar into one of the donate boxes when something caught his eyes. The little silver tag had a name engraved.

_Stiles_

Flipping over the tag, Noah noticed a three spiral symbol that looked vaguely familiar engraved on the other side, but he couldn’t place where he had seen it before. He snapped a picture of the collar he sent it to his son. 

“ _Do I want to know?_ ”

Whatever his son got into in his spare time with another consenting adult was his business. It would be nice he brought a nice girl home sometime, but the kid hadn’t dated since Malia and appeared to be having a good time at college, as it should be. He'd let him play the field a bit, sow some wild oats, before he bugged him about settling down and giving him some grandkids. There’d be time later. At least Stiles had Derek as a roommate to keep him company across the country.

The bedframe was nearly disassembled when Noah’s phone chimed again in his pocket. He quickly finished detaching the base from the headboard before he pulled the phone out. The snap was a picture of an overly happy, and pleasantly surprised Stiles. His hair was wild and his eyes wide. The caption read: 

“ _I’ve been looking everywhere for that!!_ ”

Before Noah could even close the app, determined to ignore the implications and disturbing imagery attached to the ideas the collar represented, a new picture had already arrived. It was a picture of Stiles’ socked feet resting on Derek’s lap. Derek himself was still reading, even hours after the message from that morning, with his hand resting on Stiles’ ankle.

Noah blinked. As ordinary and domestic as the image was, the caption brought up more questions than it answered. 

“ _Can you courier it?_ ”

“I really don’t even wanna know,” Noah muttered, but he responded that he would when he had a moment between packing up the house and moving, and that’s how two days later, he found himself sliding the leather collar into a padded envelope addressed to his only son.

It was a little more than a week later that Noah received a message from Stiles. In need of a break from pouring over old case files, he made the mistake of opening it at his desk.

It was a picture of Stiles grinning widely and giving the camera a cheeky wink. Around his throat was the red collar, complete with the silver tag engraved with his name.

“ _Thanks, daddio!_ ”

“I don’t wanna know,” Noah muttered, scrubbing his hand over his face. “I really don’t wanna know.”

**Author's Note:**

> You can stalk me on Tumblr here: [Always the Little Spoon](http://always-the-little-spoon.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Part of the Sterek A-Z, weekly one word prompts, challenge on Tumblr. If you're curious about it, ask me!


End file.
